Originally posted by timckelley >> Just out of curiosity (as the father of 2-yr-old and 4.5-yr-old boys), what kinds of shows is she recording? <<

The three shows are:

Liberty's Kids
Cyberchase
Between the Lions

I understand how difficult it is for your wife, wanting to provide your son with the most encouragement and stimulation she can, but if he's not interested in these shows now and even *MIGHT* be later, I can guarantee she'll have no lack of options when he does show an interest.

Any kids' show that is halfway decent and even vaguely educational does not get dropped lightly. With three networks doing an intense amount of educational kids programming (PBS, Nickelodeon, and Noggin), content is definitely at a premium. They'll rotate great shows in and out of the schedule and repackage them as needed. I've taped a *lot* of vintage 70's Sesame Street for my toddler (because I loathe what they've done to Sesame Street recently) and have a current wishlist for The Electric Company so I can hoard up a bunch of the Spiderman clips and pass them on to a TiVo-less friend whose son is crazy about Spiderman. I'm not familiar with the first two shows your wife is saving but Between The Lions is a big one and I'd be shocked if it they stopped broadcasting it in the next few years.

As for her own shows, more and more programs are being offered by-the-season on DVD (for rental or purchase). When my husband and I get around to watching Buffy, this is probably how we're going to do it. She might consider just letting a few shows go for now and buying them instead of hand-archiving them so she can have them on hand for later. This is what we'll probably end up doing for Firefly (well, except, renting, not buying). And, again, one never knows when some cheesy program or another is going to get picked up by a cable channel (think Max Headroom on TechTV).

I do really think the problem is that she needs to find a way to let go of all the archiving. It sounds like she has a very full and busy life and she just doesn't need the guilt she's feeling every time she walks past or looks at the TV. Gently remind her that it is only television and that it's okay turn her back on imaginary characters in artificial circumstances.

My wife is unwilling to delete anything, because she wants to watch it all. (There's quite a prodigious amount recorded right now.) She also doesn't know when she'll have time to watch stuff. She won't change "Keep until I delete" to an expiration date, because she can't guarantee when she'll watch the stuff. Our TiVo is effectively no longer an 80 hour TiVo, but a 6-7 hour TiVo, and it's still shrinking. Soon I'll be TiVoless. [sounds of shocked awe]. She's jeopardizing my TiVo experience. Solutions?

Find out how many hours of shows are keep until I delete... then subtract that from your 80 hours and that is what TiVo uses to tell you when things MIGHT delete.

So dub some shows then keep them and set the expiration to see when they delete/worn of pending so that could give some room and might get her to let you change the expiration( 2weeks ahead) once a week on all the shows instead

You and her need to live on the edge and just risk "your" shows .

Or fight fire with fire and set yours the same way so it won't record at all. If she fights dirty this might not be one of the first five options!

I was faced with a space problem after going on vacation during sweeps, during which a long miniseries also recorded.

To keep other stuff recording, I decided to take a cold hard look at my SP list. Some of the stuff on there that I had as KUID really didn't need to be -- for example, any of the Law & Order shows. I like them, but I won't die if I miss an episode. Anything I miss now will show up on regular reruns or TNT eventually, and it doesn't matter what order you watch that show in, or if you miss an episode. So those became keep until space needed.

I looked at my other SP's similarly, and learned that I really only had a few that I truly wanted as Record All, KUID. The rest could go if they absolutely had to, and I'd be sure of always having space for the shows that were really my top priorities.

I also had a few shows recording daily on default quality (Medium) which really could be in Basic, e.g., The Screensavers, to save more space. I don't know if either of these suggestions might help, but I hope so.

Another thing to consider with the kids' TV shows is that I'm sure kids TV won't be immune to the explosion of TV shows on DVD. (In fact kids' TV seems particularly ripe for that medium.) A $19.95 per month Netflix subscription seems to me a far more practical way to have access to such shows, without archiving yourself into a house full of tapes stacked all over

Originally posted by samkuhn You really should upgrade your Tivo to a large drive size. A 120-160GB drive will cost about $70-$120 and will more than double your space. The process is reasonably straightforward. Visit the upgrade forum.

I just visited the upgrade forum, and unfortunately they tell me that my type of TiVo (series 2 80 hours) is designed to only hold one drive. They say there's risk of excessive heat and overtaxing the power supply if I try to add a second drive. There's the option of replacing, rather than adding, but then I won't get as much space. I wonder how large a drive I could put in there and what it would cost.

Also, the installation instructions look pretty complicated. I have installed hard drives and RAM memory, but that's about the extent of my computer hardware expertise. (I am an applications programmer, though.) I'm wondering how hard this upgrade would be.

Yes, I know a second TiVo is expensive, but probly cheaper than a divorce. Kidding of course, but I think it would help.

Frankly, KUID should only be used when it's a one-shot show or series that you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO SEE. If a show with a (!) gets deleted eventually, guess what: you didn't care enough about the show to watch it. It took me a while to realize this, but a few forced deletions made me realize that I didn't really care that the shows had been deleted!

One thing you might try is to get her to watch one show/episode a night, and you watch it with her, even if you've seen it or don't care about it. Maybe right before bed, or at least after the kiddo is down for the night. Given the nature of TiVo, you can clear out a series at a time rather than have to jump around.

No, No, No! You guys are missing the forest looking at the trees. It is not acceptable to let Tivo rule your life by forcing you to watch more tv to "catch up." Tivo lets us rule the world of tv. All any hard drive is supposed to do is make sure there are plenty of your favorite shows available any time, day or night and especially on weekends. If it erases some unwatched, it is only to replace them with other good stuff. Relax!

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Originally posted by joekarglo No, No, No! You guys are missing the forest looking at the trees. It is not acceptable to let Tivo rule your life by forcing you to watch more tv to "catch up." Tivo lets us rule the world of tv. All any hard drive is supposed to do is make sure there are plenty of your favorite shows available any time, day or night and especially on weekends. If it erases some unwatched, it is only to replace them with other good stuff. Relax!

But I have a problem with your statement. First let me update you all on the status with my wife. She has started making progress watching her shows and deleting them. (Sigh of relief) But, now that she's seen her newfound space, she has increased her rate of finding new shows to record. Fortunately, many of these are not KUID. (Sigh of relief). But some are KUID, and as I speak, I'm again within a couple of hours of losing my TiVo space, because almost everything on it (minus a couple of hours) is being taken up with KUID shows. (Gasp of horror).

So my problem with your post is that if the TiVo gets filled up with KUID, that means it won't record anything, and once I've seen all my stuff, I'll have to nothing to watch any on TiVo! (Gasp of horror.) The TiVo in effect, will be useless to me until she deletes some KUID.

The problem is, she's developed this hobby that I don't completely empathize with. She likes to record all sorts of classic movies (i.e. movies that might be old, but in her opinion, are really good), and then archive them to VHS. She doesn't always keep up with her job of taping them off though. (I'm sure our house has in excess of 100 VHS tapes as I speak.) However, the majority of the KUID is still just current series that she's trying to keep up with.

I'm tending to think if I upgrade, it will only delay the problem. The new space could still eventually be wiped out with KUID. So I'm starting to think that two TiVo's might be the best answer. I have a question about this, though: In general, there are three types of recordings re record:

Stuff I want to see
Stuff she wants to see
Stuff we both want to see.

The third category is not a small category, and so how to we negotiate whose TiVo gets this third category? If some goes on mine, and some on hers (i.e. we split it), the stuff that's on mine could conceivably backlog if she doesn't watch it.

New question. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking I could have a defense to preserve a little bit of the TiVo until the day we get a second. Suppose I take one of my favorite series, and say "Keep at most 2 episodes", and "Keep until I delete". What exactly would this do? If two episodes are already recorded, and a third comes up, will it automatically delete the older of the two and then record the third, so that I'd again have two? If so, this is perfect: I'd always have a recent episode to watch. But this doesn't sound quite right. KUID means don't delete until the user explicitly deletes. So how could Keep at most 2 episodes, coupled with KUID ever delete, even to make room for the new episode? Could somebody explain this functionality to me?

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The third category is not a small category, and so how to we negotiate whose TiVo gets this third category? If some goes on mine, and some on hers (i.e. we split it), the stuff that's on mine could conceivably backlog if she doesn't watch it.

For stuff you both want to see, both of you would record it on each of your TiVos, because you won't necessarily watch it at the same time. If you watch it together, delete it from both as soon as you're done.

The problem comes though if you both want to watch it but hers doesn't have space to record it. Then you'll just have to put your foot down, and either she'll have to watch it with you or miss it. If she still can't live with such exceedingly reasonable arrangements, you and she have bigger problems going on than TiVo. But my uneducated guess is that she will be sensible enough to respect that arrangement, especially if you give her the TiVo with the bigger hard drive .

Originally posted by timckelley New question. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking I could have a defense to preserve a little bit of the TiVo until the day we get a second. Suppose I take one of my favorite series, and say "Keep at most 2 episodes", and "Keep until I delete". What exactly would this do? If two episodes are already recorded, and a third comes up, will it automatically delete the older of the two and then record the third, so that I'd again have two? If so, this is perfect: I'd always have a recent episode to watch. But this doesn't sound quite right. KUID means don't delete until the user explicitly deletes. So how could Keep at most 2 episodes, coupled with KUID ever delete, even to make room for the new episode? Could somebody explain this functionality to me?

Hello there,

It wouldn't record the third show, you have to set it to "Keep Until Space Needed" then It will do what you said in your post. It will record the most recent two episodes. I do this with the morning and evening news where it only keeps one episode until the next showing.

This (at best) will only temporarily solve space issues, but I've used the technique several times when going on vacation...

If you've got movies or other programs that tend to get repeated (e.g. cable shows, movies, etc.), you may be able to re-record the same thing in the future - basically freeing up some space for a few weeks.

For instance, I had quite a number of movies recorded from HBO sitting in Now Playing. I was going to be gone for a week, and the ToDo List showed me that several things in NP would be deleted by the time I got back (I always leave suggestions turned on, as that's an easy way to judge how much actual space is left - works better on the DirecTiVo, but anyway...). So I took a look through Now Playing, and picked out the longest programs (most disk space consumed), and did a title search. Lo and behold, there was the same movie(s) in the schedule, with showings out almost two weeks from now. Easy decision - I'm not going to watch it this week, and so I deleted the movie, and scheduled it to record again - using the airtime that was out the furthest in the future...

I was able to repeat the process several times, and managed to free up 10-15 hours of space, with the same movies back on the TiVo two weeks later. No missed shows while I was on vacation, and nothing deleted that I intended to watch... (Oh, yeah, I've already upgraded, and of course, the TiVo is *still* full of stuff I want to watch - eventually)...

1. I have an upgrade planned to 240 hours. I've seen you guys say this just delays the problem, but read the other steps first. The main things having so many hours will allow me to do are:
a. keep my movies/specials until I have time to watch them
b. record all of a series I intend to watch in order until I get the episodes I'm missing (in my case, I want to watch Sopranos beginning to end)

2. Pick the shows I absolutely want to watch, set them to record all and keep until I delete. For me, this is only three shows: Enterprise, South Park and CSI, so I'm not likely to get a big backlog here.

3. Other shows I want, set to keep 5 at most and delete as space is needed. This allows me to grab shows in syndication like The Simpsons and just watch them as it's convenient. If it deletes one I haven't seen before I get to it, no big--I'll have 4 others recorded at any given time and I'll delete the ones I know I have seen (or don't want to see again) as soon as I have time to mess with Tivo again. If the order doesn't matter and they're being run in syndication, all you really want here is to be able to watch one whenever you feel like it--this solves that problem.

Chances are you've got some stuff in category 2 that you can bump the priority down to category 3 there.

I read where it's kind of difficult to upgrade 80 hour series 2 without replacing (as opposed to adding) a hard drive. So it become more expensive, and I don't think I can even so much as double my space. (If what I've read is right.)

It wouldn't record the third show, you have to set it to "Keep Until Space Needed" then It will do what you said in your post. It will record the most recent two episodes. I do this with the morning and evening news where it only keeps one episode until the next showing.

Good luck,
TiVoMan

Well, darn! That means if the hard drive fills up with KUID and then I have KAM=2 with KUSN, that means that before the 3rd episode comes up, my space becomes vulnerable to one my wife's KUID episodes on the To Do list. I.e. my space could get confiscated by my wife's list. So this solution idea of mine is not very good.

Originally posted by ac3dd For stuff you both want to see, both of you would record it on each of your TiVos, because you won't necessarily watch it at the same time. If you watch it together, delete it from both as soon as you're done.

I've approached my wife on this subject, and she thinks it's a waste to record the same show on both TiVos. She thinks that since it's using up twice the amount of HD space it could if it were just on one TiVo, that that's a waste. But she's not 100% close-minded on this. She further has suggested that category 3 be put on my TiVo. I'm hoping she was joking... I guess I'll ask her to explain that comment. Afterall, if I tend to watch things earlier than she, it would make sense to put category 3 on hers, because then I could watch it quick, and then I wouldn't be bottlenecking her with regards to holding up the release of space. Conversely, should quite conceivably bottleneck me, if category 3 were on my TiVo. Of course, there's another problem with putting category 3 on her TiVo: If she fills up her TiVo, it could stop recording new episodes, which could impact me in sitations like "Enterprise", and other shows where I don't want to miss any episodes. Putting it on both TiVos is starting to make sense to me.

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Putting mutually desired programs on both does use up some more space, but it solves many of the conflicting scenarios. Remember that once the first one of you watches a program, it gets deleted from that particular box so it's not as if it's taking up double the space forever. And if you watch it together, deleting it frees up twice the space . If you put the commonly wanted shows on just one box, you're back to the original problem again.

Similarly, having two cars instead of one will cost you more in gas and insurance (in addition to the obvious cost of the car itself), but if the scheduling and locations of your workplaces and other activities are quite disparate, the extra car goes a long way in reducing the location and timing conflicts.

Not to sound archaic, but give her a good vcr. It sounds like her viewing habits would be better supported by that than the Tivo.
1. It sounds like she knows what she wants to tape.
2. She pretty much knows when it's on.
3. She doesn't have the time to watch it right away.
4. She plans on putting the shows on tape anyway.
Keep the stuff you want to watch and both of you want to watch on the Tivo.
JAS

Originally posted by gobiewankenobi Not to sound archaic, but give her a good vcr. It sounds like her viewing habits would be better supported by that than the Tivo.
1. It sounds like she knows what she wants to tape.
2. She pretty much knows when it's on.
3. She doesn't have the time to watch it right away.
4. She plans on putting the shows on tape anyway.
Keep the stuff you want to watch and both of you want to watch on the Tivo.
JAS

No, actually my wife has good points about why she likes TiVo better than VCR.

1. Often the VCR misses her show due to last minute program changes
2. She can more easily control which shows, and in which order they go on tape. She likes to put similar things on the same tape. I suppose she could keep her tapes labled, so she'd know which tape to put in for recording, but that doesn't solve the ordering problem within a tape.
3. If a tape runs to the end (which heppens more than you'd think) during a recording, she'd be out of luck if it wasn't on TiVo. With TiVo she can restart the show and put in a new tape.
4. Some shows she really intends to watch and not put to tape.... she just hasn't gotten around to it.

Anything you want to see you should record on yours. You won't run out of space as soon as she would. And you have more control of what you want to watch. If you guys have more than 40 hours of stuff you both want to watch and you have 40 hrs of stuff just you want to watch, then lord help you.

Can this thread really have gone on this long??? Don't use KUID at all - whatever is oldest will be deleted when space is needed. If you haven't watched it yet, you were probably watching programs that were more desirable to you instead. And if it does get deleted, oh well. It's TV, that's why we have reruns. The Tivo is supposed to make TV revolve around your schedule, not you around TVs. I don't ever expect to watch most of the 130 hrs currently on my Tivo. If you don't have time to watch all the programs it's probably because you have a life and something better to be doing and should be happy. You can take satisfaction every time Tivo deletes something that it's validating you have a life other than TV. Perhaps for every 100 deletions, you can throw a "I have a life other than TV party."

Okay just kidding. But does your wife really thing she'll ever be able to watch all those 100s of video tapes? If this is a big issue between you then look out for what's to come!

I have not been able to talk my wife out of using KUID. She really does think she'll eventually see all the old recordings - that or offload them to tape. By the way, even though it's an 80 hour TiVo, that's at basic quality. The time length goes way down for higher qualities. As for, does she think she'll see all 100 video tapes? Possibly not, but everything that sits on TiVo, she either wants to see or offload. But she won't say when she'll do it, because of the other things that keep her busy. Therefore: KUID. She stands by that decision.

By the way, our suggestions folder now hovers around zero, because of how filled up our TiVo is. And only a few shows sit without KUID (mostly mine). The good news is, when I come downstairs to watch TiVo late at night, and find no suggestions to watch, nor any new episodes of my limited list, often I can find one of my wife's shows to entertain me. (Our tastes have some overlap.) At least my wife's list of shows has not stagnated, because she is watching/offloading/deleting.... it's just that her ToDo list replaces what she deletes fairly promptly, not leaving me much room for any To Do list of my own.

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Regarding shows you both want to see, just make a simple rule: The TiVo "owner" decides how long the show stays on their TiVo.

Thus, in the case of a mutual show recorded on your TiVo, it will stay on the TiVo until either (a) both of you have watched it and then manually deleted it, or (b) the TiVo software automatically deleted it (to free space), even though she hadn't gotten around to watching it yet. (If you are in the habit of keeping your Now Playing List well-pruned, this would mean she had several days or weeks to sit down and watch it.)